When you need fresh marketing ideas or decide it's time to upgrade your accounting software, the first thing you do is Google it. When it comes to achieving marketing goals, most B2B buyers that content marketing is important. Without at least some kind of presence on Google, businesses will face a digital uphill battle. And SEO strategies are an organisation’s key to success when it comes to building an online presence for your brand. 

What is SEO?

The term SEO refers to the process of optimising a website for search engines. The purpose of SEO is to increase the visibility of a company in organic search results. It aids firms in ranking more sites higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) (Search Engine Result Pages). As a result of these efforts, the company's website receives more visitors, boosting the odds of more conversions, which leads to more customers and money. In simple terms, it can be explained as a strategy that can help ensure that when someone Google’s your product or service category, they find a link to your website.  There are numerous methods for improving the SEO of your website's pages. Title tags, keywords, image tags, internal link structure, and inbound links are all things that search engines check for (also known as backlinks). In addition to site structure and design, visitor behaviour, and other external, off-site considerations, search engines consider how highly ranked your site should be in their SERPs. When all of these variables are considered, SEO primarily affects two things: rankings and visibility.

Rankings

This is how search engines assess where a web page should appear in the SERP. A web page can only rank for one position at a time, starting at position one and continuing through the final number of search engine results for the query. Due to content freshness, competition in the SERP, or algorithm updates by the search engine itself, a web page's ranking may alter over time.

Visibility

This word refers to the prominence of a specific domain in search engine results. Your domain will appear prominently in SERPs if it has high visibility. When a domain isn't visible for a large number of relevant search queries, it's said to have low search visibility. Both ranking and visibility are in charge of achieving the two most important SEO goals: traffic and domain authority.

How does Google Determine a Page's Ranking?

There is only one objective for search engines. They want to give users the most up-to-date answers or information. Their algorithms select pages that are the most relevant to your inquiry every time you use them. Then rate them, with the most authoritative or popular ones appearing first. Search engines consider two factors when delivering relevant information to users:

• The search query's relevance to the information on a page. Search engines evaluate it based on a variety of characteristics, such as the topic or keywords.
• The popularity of a website on the Internet is used to determine its authority. The more popular a page or resource is, the more valuable its content is to readers, according to Google.

They utilise sophisticated equations known as search algorithms to assess all of this data. The algorithms used by search engines are kept private. However, SEOs have recognised some of the elements they take into account when ranking a page over time. They're known as ranking factors, and they're at the heart of some of the best SEO services in India.

Core Components of a Strong SEO Strategy

• Make Use of the Correct Keywords
• Conduct a competitor analysis
• SEO for the homepage should be prioritised.
• Enhance Product Pages
• Responsive design is a good idea.
• Backlinks are important for e-commerce SEO.

A strong SEO strategy would help increase your brand’s visibility online and thus increase traffic on your website. With the best SEO services in India, you can bring in more visitors and convert them into customers. Although SEO may be a time taking practice in the beginning, it is one that is definitely worth it.

Brands and individuals tune in to Twitter every day to connect with people over real-time conversations and to see and discuss what's going on in the world, across all of their interests and passions. Twitter hosted an online event in March 2022 called #What’shappeningIndia2022 where experts spoke about twitter’s latest innovations, products, content, and commitment to promoting healthy conversations.

Twitter is a vital space for public discourse

During these post-pandemic times, when important conversations are going on around the world, our world has never been clearer and it has never been more critical. Twitter has outlined its purpose as serving the public conversation across news, current affairs, gaming, sports, entertainment, and even investing - it is a vital space for public discourse. Conversations connect people, help share knowledge, and inspire creativity and innovation, but first and foremost it all starts with feeling safe. Hence, providing a safe and healthy platform to everyone is mandatory. According to Sarah Personette, Chief Customer Officer, Twitter “Ensuring a safer Twitter requires a proactive approach with people-based thinking, policies that lead, products that protect, and partnerships that drive industry-wide change to make Twitter a safer place. Twitter is your window into the culture and a hyper-connected world, how and where your brand shows up has never been more important. Our platform is the best place to launch a new product campaign, service, or offer. And is the best place to connect with the big cultural moments your customers care about.”

Twitter serves millions of brands and small businesses present on the platform and is improving and innovating every day to make the experience more seamless and help brands come closer to their consumer. It is giving businesses and individuals a chance to succeed with Twitter for professionals, testing new e-commerce tools, like the shop module and a live shopping experiment to drive sales right in the timeline, it is also getting people paid on Twitter now. Publishers, creators, and developers can get paid through features like ticketed spaces, review, and super follows. The new feature ‘tips’ allows people to support whatever they want whether it's a creator, a cause, or just someone needing help with the rent. All this opens up the power of conversation for brands. Brands win when more creators bring more followers. Twitter is shipping faster, learning faster, deprecating faster, and scaling faster. Consumer Innovation & Audience

Pretha Athrey, Marketing Head at Twitter spoke about consumer innovation and audience, stating that the purpose is to spark public conversation which is valuable to the world both socially and economically. There is space for every topic and conversation on Twitter. It is also deeply committed to building and maintaining a safe and healthy platform to ensure equal participation. While Twitter’s current mission already recognizes that focusing on people is a priority, there is still more work to do.

Pretha debunked a common misconception that Twitter is centered around news and politics. These topics represent only 20% of the tweet volume globally, whereas 80% of the conversation is around people's passions, such as gaming, lifestyle, music, movies, TV, or Sports. The fact is that people on Twitter in India have a truly diverse range of passions: over 64% are interested in technology, 63% in music, more than 57% are interested in sports, over 55% in food & drinks, and much more. Twitter’s audience is often the first to talk about things so when topics or trends start to pop up on Twitter, they provide a window into culture, and what's going to be important in the future. Twitter's superpower has always been an active, leaned-in audience. And today, it's even more valuable to customers because they are influential, receptive and they drive results. Looking ahead, Twitter will be the most effective place for your brand to stand out and lead the conversation.

We know that launches have always been critical to business growth. It starts with consumer behavior and Twitter helps you break through your launch faster and spread wider because of the nature of the audience. Globally, 91% of Twitter users want to see new brand launches on Twitter. With more people seeing and talking about your brand launch campaign on Twitter, it becomes more efficient. While the launch is important, connecting with your audience is also important followed by improving the conversions. Pretha said “This past year we have seen major brands across verticals, be it tech, OEM, auto, media, entertainment, etc, leverage, the full range of Twitter's solutions. Let me share with you some breakthrough campaigns today, starting with Samsung, India that took advantage of Twitter’s solutions to drive massive awareness for the incredible reach of the Samsung Galaxy Watch, and we were able to deliver an invaluable launch. MG motors in India also took to Twitter to introduce MG Aster, India's first car with a personal AI assistant. They unveiled AI Affairs to Indian audiences using Twitter's takeover products and making sure that they were active in a very interesting way for pre-launch, launch, and post-launch, and they were able to taste, reveal and sustain the conversation, across the timeline creating amazing impact. Finally, having a purpose is such an important part of both culture and business at Twitter, one of our core values is winning with purpose, and here we encourage brands to use Twitter in the most impactful way and stay top of mind. We feel that there is no better place than Twitter to launch, connect or drive something meaningful and purposeful for our consumers.”

Twitter for Brands Kanika Mittal, Large Client Solution Head at Twitter spoke about Twitter for brands. Whatever happens in the world happens on Twitter, people come to Twitter to talk about their interests and passions, to follow what their favorite brands are saying. People are in a discovery mindset when they are on Twitter therefore brands are likely to make a lasting impression. The audience on Twitter is influential and receptive and it drives results. Brands are now more than ever leaning on to Twitter to connect with consumers and grow their businesses.

Twitter offers a range of highly customized products that can be tailored and packaged to suit your brand's purpose. Kanika says “We have seen strong results with our Twitter products. We are rapidly improving our performance solutions and providing advertisers with seamless ways to showcase the content that they have created. And on top of that, we have very specific objectives to make sure that every campaign is optimized to help you achieve the right metrics. Brands that deeply care about their customers and their employees can use the platform to deliver any purposeful initiative, evangelize it and make people feel their authenticity because they are on a platform like Twitter where audiences are leaned in and are real and here it is my privilege to talk about a great example - CRED had a wonderful initiative called #tweetforgood where they took to Twitter and tried to make a difference by engaging with users and getting them to contribute to SOS Village India simply by tweeting. That is the power of the platform #tweetforgood surely created tremendous good for society.

The Emerging India Story- SMBs

Deepti Rao, Head-Customer Service APAC (SMB) at Twitter India explored the emerging India story and shared that despite the headwinds from covid last year, the SMB India business on Twitter stayed buoyant and resilient seeing steady growth in both revenues as well as the number of advertisers. More and more SMBs are being drawn to Twitter. It is the digital differentiator. The last few years have seen a sharp trend toward the digitization of SMBs in India. According to the Cisco India SMB, Digital Maturity, Study 2020 - 68% of Indian SMBs will push new products and services on their digital platforms to grow and differentiate themselves from the competition. While there are several digital platforms out there, twitter's unique niche in capturing the current parts of the conversation in India combined with its educated affluent, and engaged audience makes it a force to reckon with. Twitter is an enabler for SMBs looking to build a brand and a strong online presence. It is the ideal platform to launch something new, grow followers, engage with customers beyond customer support and build brand personality by connecting with key moments that are trending in India. More and more SMB businesses are seeing the value and the opportunity in being present on Twitter. Also, going the extra mile SMBs often have lean teams, and having customer support makes all the difference. Twitter’s dedicated sales team for India supports a wide range of SMB businesses with everything from recommendations on campaign strategy to operational support and optimization. In addition, Twitter also conducts webinar training sessions from time to time and has Twitter Flight School- a self-learning platform for those looking to learn more about Twitter advertisements. SMB Businesses can reach out to Twitter through help forms, which are advertised on Twitter via the Twitter business handle, or by writing to advertiser help at twitter.com. Lastly, Twitter helps SMBs to be a part of conversations that matter, it is a powerful platform for several exciting upcoming business verticals such as gaming, crypto, and EDTech.” Twitter leads the way for conversations in this space and provides a great way to reach interested audiences across these sectors. Twitter's advertising policies, which have recently been updated offer more advertisers a chance to go beyond organic engagement on Twitter, and we're seeing significant interest from advertisers in this phase.” Says Deepti. Twitter Next – Innovative Campaigns

Last year the world felt a bit different and it still is to a certain extent, but Twitter is moving ahead in the right direction. “The public conversation about things that matter, topics we love and services we interact with, continued to bind us together. Human-centric creativity and ideas emerging through technology continued to capture attention disproportionately on the timeline. What's even more revealing is that the conversation around international shows streaming in India also grew significantly last year. Brands connect with people on Twitter through every moment that matters to the audience from celebrating yoga day to festivals such as Diwali, and Holi. All these conversations and campaigns continue to drive impact for categories, and multiple brands.” said Rishab Sharma, Head Global- Twitter Next

Beyond all the campaigns today, how a brand shows up in society and on Twitter sets the tone for how the audience is to react to the messages. There are numerous award-winning campaigns in the past where the brand, has brought attention to a cause, a message, and contributed back to society. Living through the pandemic- a sense of purpose has become far more deep-rooted now.

The vision of #OneTwitter

Twitter always strives to be ahead of the curve and ensures to be in sync with what the ecosystem partners need, whether they are agencies, media, creative, strategy, tech, API builders, data, and research partners. “The need is for solutions that go beyond an advertisement that gives an impression. Understanding this need and future potential, Twitter has aligned its strengths into a bouquet of services that can be offered to agencies and brands across the pillars of data, creative & strategy, API, and services. It is called ‘One Twitter’- It's the suite of services that partners in your journey from the time you as a marketer or a brand or an agency think of customer-focused communication till the campaigns have been rolled out and there are metrics to show how well it did. All of this within your single relationship with One Twitter” says Krishna Iyer, Channel Sales Head at Twitter India.

Let's take a look at the various pillars that help move the conversation ahead through One Twitter. The first pillar is data whether it's a hashtag-based feed on a certain vertical or a brand analysis, a topical wave of conversation, the marketing insights & analytics teams have enabled tools that can help with data that is structured, relevant, and actionable through an insight and measured approach. Your idea can have a lot more impact when you begin with the knowledge of where it’s going to play out. Once you have the data to back your idea, the idea must take the form and shape that's designed to impress, for impact at the stage of implementation, and at the campaign success stage, this is where the creative & strategy pillar comes in comprising of Twitter’s in-house global brand’s strategy team- Twitter Next, design studio- Art House and brand sales content offering called Amplify.

These services can bring ideation, innovation, and influence your idea that's not only best suited for performance on Twitter but would also elevate the position of the brand and agency as being ahead of the curve whether it's the launch of a new car streamed live on Twitter or the software brand partnering with Asia's leading media network to discuss the impact of AI on business- Twitter has your back. Additionally, Twitter’s marketing and comms team does work with one-of-a-kind, a chosen few successful campaigns that help showcase the idea and its seamless execution across different media both earned and paid.  

The API pillar is where Twitter has partnered with tens of solution enablers who can help your brand across audience targeting, creative, AD experiences, and campaign management advertising analysis. Additionally, we're also offering partner activation credits, funds that can cover fees with partners who unlock valuable product offerings for Twitter campaigns. Now what brings all of this together is the ability to ensure each brand and agency can tap into any of these pillars in a seamless and output-driven way. Thus, servicing is the final and binding pillar. Twitter is adaptive for all brands across multiple budget levels and service requirements and has the ability and team structures to manage them all so whether you are a small business owner, a new growing D2C brand, or the world's most aspirational mobile phone OEM, Twitter can cater to all with the right mix of idea, influence, and impact. In conclusion, the idea of #OneTwitter is to be a solutions partner to all brands and agencies from the time the idea is rough and meandering till it succeeds, sustains, and brings the agency & brand what they set out to achieve. 

Sports on Twitter- Everyone’s favorite topic of conversation

Twitter is where people come to find out what's happening in real-time. It could be to catch up on the biggest news of the day or not to be missed entertainment, or even the biggest sports moments and memes. Conversations that make up cultural touchpoints and communities come to Twitter and thrive and that’s incredibly exciting not just for those who are consuming that content day by day but also for content partners and publishers across the country in multiple languages. “We work a lot in the video and live video space with content publishers, and our partners create and share premium content that brands love to align with. Twitter's amplify sponsorships program leverages the power of that premium content allowing publishers to monetize their best video content, and advertisers to associate with videos that brands save via that one-to-one, mapping with publishers. Brands get a share of voice and access to high engagement, occasions, events, and even bespoke video content. So, we're talking innovation, great content and we are talking audience engagement. We had incredible success with interactive campaigns, custom content campaigns across verticals from the worlds of tech business, and thought leadership across various formats.” Says Amrita Tripathy, Head, Global Content Partnership team at Twitter India.

Brands can tap into and leverage the conversations, and get an incredible brand lift by aligning with partners who are hand-selected across all the content categories and ride the tremendous momentum that arises from these conversations. In the context of sports, Twitter is the roar of a stadium and it does double up as a natural second screen for sports as people want to watch & share in real-time together as a community. We all know of the incredible community that came together around Cricket on Twitter with a whopping 96.2 million tweets in a year with 4.4 million unique authors. Amrita also spoke with two stalwarts – the very well-known Harsha Bhogle and Gaurav Kapur, who are the best in the business to share their unique insights about the business of sports in the digital era. The conversation revolved around a few things that brands can keep in mind when they align with premium content. The most important being that Twitter has democratized content creators – a lot of real-time conversations are happening on the platform. Also, brands & cricket are a match made in heaven as people naturally follow sports. However, brands must be authentic and must tell relevant stories to be a perfect fit for the business of sports. 

The India Growth Story

Apurva Dalal, Director of Engineering Site Lead at Twitter India shared his interpretation of Twitter mentioning it as a service where history is being recorded for several significant global movements, whether it was the Chandrayaan-2 launch in 2019, Biden's victory, #wediditjoe in 2021 to a covid-19 pandemic or most recently the war in Ukraine. Twitter is available in 11 Indian languages. Almost 50% of Tweets in India are now in languages other than English, whether it’s elections or movie releases, or the world cup match. It's all unfolding on Twitter in real-time across languages bringing millions of Indians closer to learning about what's happening, empowering voices, connecting like-minded individuals, and enabling them to grow and learn along #Indiaistwitter. 

Shirish Andhare, Director and Head of products at Twitter India, spoke further about the India story. He mentioned that Twitter is deeply committed to the Indian market and talent with a dedicated tech team on the ground. He spoke about how Twitter is going to fulfill aspirations and ideas of making India happen on Twitter through a combination of global and India first innovations. India is unlike any other region, it has a diversity of interests, cultures, and languages which contribute to very unique product challenges, and that just motivates Twitter to focus even more deeply on Indian users, stay agile and responsive to everything one can learn from millions of conversations happening on the service, and to improve the service for every Indian every single day. Twitter is actively investing in a broad selection of content in a variety of languages and formats that are unique to the needs of India, its past times, and its passions. It will be investing in media-rich content and creators across a diverse range of topics and languages while doubling down on creating the best experiences for India's passions, starting with cricket. Twitter plans to focus on fostering online communities and bringing them even closer while enabling everyone to discover information, learn, entertain and grow together. 

Hearing out these industry experts has made it evident why Twitter is the perfect place to announce something new or connect with what's going on across industries. Having seen the value proposition, we know what to expect in the year ahead! It’s important to learn how to leverage social media to your brand’s advantage and we at #ARMWorldwide can help you out in doing that. Contact us to transform and grow together.

Disclaimer: The information provided in this blog is primarily sourced from the virtual event that Twitter India hosted in March 2022. The information provided is for general information purposes only. All information provided here is in good faith, however, we make no representation or warranty of any kind, expressed or implied regarding the accuracy, adequacy, validity, reliability, availability, or completeness of any of this information.

Search traffic, conversion rate, and website performance are some digital marketing jargons that are not unheard of for savvy marketing experts who aim to thrive in the current digital age. Bounce rate is another critical term that differentiates between a star performing website and one that fails to attract and retain visitors.  E-commerce and retail websites have an average bounce rate of 20-45%, implying numerous missed opportunities. This means that even a minor optimisation in the website can significantly impact the bounce rate and massively boost the user experience and business growth.  Here's how you can establish ground among competitors by running a successful, low bounce rate website:

Optimise Landing Pages for High 'Time on Site' 

A well-structured website plays a critical role in ensuring high Dwell Time. Its primary role is to fulfill user intent, which determines the time users spend on the site. Research suggests that about 53% of mobile site visitors abandon a website that loads in over 3 seconds, meaning that every second counts in evaluating the bounce rate. Your website loading speed, its visual appeal, and content quality are some factors that play a critical role in keeping the visitor engaged.  For a fairly low bounce rate on your website, well-placed ads, limited redirects and plugins, clear call-to-action buttons, and minified site codes are some optimisation steps you can undertake. You can significantly modify your website's rank on the Search Engine Results Page with these tactics.  

Visual Content for Customer Attention 

The easiest yet most effective means to mitigate cognitive load is to enhance visual content that informs, interacts, and influences visitors, encouraging them to take desirable actions. Visual content is a 'necessary' element to grasp users' attention. This does not mean overloading your website but embedding visual elements with attention to their placement and relevance.  The significance of visual content marketing increases ten folds as people remember only 20% of what they read, 10% of what they hear, but 80% of what they see. This means that images, data-driven visuals like infographics, videos, charts, graphs, flowcharts, illustrations that narrate a story, visual surveys, intriguing GIFs and memes, etc., can help lower bounce rates. You must focus on the optimum number of visual elements you need on your website and the quality of visual content you offer to your visitors. 

Positive UX Dictates 90% of Brand Loyalty

UX quality and users' perception of online presence are key factors in measuring a brand's performance and success. 58% of customers do not hesitate to terminate business with a brand owing to poor customer experience. Therefore, you can ensure long-term engagement and loyalty toward your brand with proactive UX.  Positive UX determines the trust and credibility a customer has in your brand, both today and in the future, leading to higher interaction, better engagement, and an increased conversion rate. When visitors find it convenient to navigate your website, they tend to stick for long. Therefore, to ensure a smooth customer journey, you must strategically plan activities, from creating easy-to-navigate, well-structured, responsive websites to prominent CTAs on landing pages. 

Stayin' Alive with Live Blogging & Streaming

Users today judge your brand's veracity based on your digital presence. Hence, investing in live experiences can help you build a long-lasting connection with the audience. If the reason behind your online existence is to attract, engage, and retain customers, consider live podcasts & audio interviews as a great means to increase traffic and decrease bounce rates. Moreover, by hosting a strategically planned live event embedded on the website, you can witness improved customer engagement.  Additionally, user-generated content (UGC), comments, and discussions on your website can increase users' dwell time. By identifying the challenges and possibilities and cultivating a positive relationship with your buyer persona, you can improve the viewer experience on your pages. 

Let Your Customers Narrate Your Story

Today's audience is well-educated and aware. Thus, user-generated content proves to be better-performing, clearer, and much more reasonable, leading to lower bounce rates and higher duration on the webpage.  Research indicates that UGC is 50% more trusted and dictates 29% higher web conversion than websites without it. Therefore, positive word-of-mouth through user reviews, comments, and testimonies works as social proof, improving your brands' authenticity and trustworthiness. Furthermore, emphasising community-driven values on landing pages, sharing social media contests results, and incorporating visual ratings are effective ways to keep users coming back for more.  

Rethink Your Website Optimisation Efforts

The big distinction is whether users bounce back because your website ensured their purpose was fulfilled or to search for a better result on your competitor's site. While the former would mean you have managed to establish the best website and offer the best solutions (a rare case scenario), the latter implies that your website fails to offer what users expect.  Either case, laying emphasis on your online presence is of the essence when functioning in today's digitally-driven business landscape. And what better way to do so than revamping your website, the online face of your business.  While most businesses incline all their energies toward creating the best product or service, strategically-planned website optimisation activities can reduce the bounce rate and boost business growth exponentially. All these measures can increase the dwell time and deliver more repeat visitors. Explore what your website optimisation needs are and put the best activities in place to enhance customer engagement. Unleashing the full potential of your website in your hands, all you need to do is implement the right strategies most appropriately!

From Stadiums to Screens: How IPL Embraced the Digital Era

The mutually beneficial relationship between digital marketing and the Indian Premier League (IPL) has thrived from the very start, and with the rise in hyper-digitalisation, the industry has only benefited more. Advertising and promotion on social media sites or via a partnership with cricketers have also given much-needed public exposure to several brands and their products & services. Let us look at how it has been working out so far.

Social Media Engagement

Brands employ numerous digital marketing strategies via television, social media platforms, and other channels of communication to place products throughout the IPL season. Social media engagement works differently for each of the cricket teams wherein they have their own campaigns for multiple interaction points with their audience via Twitter, IG, etc. Further, brands from many sectors look forward to the IPL season to expand their market, visibility and reach via teams & players. According to the blogging network, 51% of people use Twitter to read tweets on events & news stories, 25% aim to collaborate with Tweets during the game, and 21% plan to engage afterwards. In fact, around 25% of people actually follow their favourite players on social media.

Live Broadcasting Rights

With a boom in the live streaming and broadcasting space, many brands are providing front row seats to their audience to ensure that their viewership enjoys the comfort, accessibility, and convenience. IPL is crucial for broadcasters who wish to improve their OTT presence. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is expected to sell OTT streaming and TV rights separately in order to maximise revenue. Sources say that many broadcasters may battle for a piece of the IPL pie in 2022, wherein the motivation is to broaden the reach and also increase revenue. Amazon and Reliance Businesses are anticipated to compete with Disney and Sony for television and internet broadcast rights for the two-month series and at a whopping cost of ₹50,000 crores.

Sales Hike for Food and Beverages

People are driven by emotional investment, which is why the stronger the link to cricket, the more motive there is to favour and purchase a brand that is being endorsed. Several restaurants and bars come up with lucrative IPL deals with live screening and special menus via social media platforms, thereby creating an F&B hotspot for their customers. Also, brands partnering with teams and players open up several F&B kiosks within the stadiums, which help in boosting brand visibility and sales and also create a brand association with the game. Stadiums too partner with F&B brands to create a wow factor and provide an engaging experience to their consumers holistically, wherein they can indulge and socialise with their peers while enjoying the game.

Influencer Marketing Campaigns

With IPL becoming the buzzword, many brands use influencer marketing strategies and campaigns to reach out to their audience by creating an emotional connect with the game. In 2020, 16.2K+ out of 622K+ posts were influencer marketing based. Businesses take advantage of the IPL season by collaborating with prominent influencers to create a buzz about their new products. During IPL 2020, 146.6 million+ influencer posts were shared on Instagram and Twitter. Brands employ conversational methods wherein the audience can chat with influencers and engage in a quirky manner. Additionally, regional influencer marketing is done to reign in the sports spirit with the help of different teams, which enables brands to engage with newer audiences across the country. 

Endorsements and Sponsorships

Many brands encash endorsements and sponsorships opportunities during IPL to help boost revenue and sales for their business. One of the most significant benefits of such sponsorship deals is that businesses frequently gain access to players for brand endorsements which significantly helps in increasing product sales. Stadium branding, shirt branding, merchandise branding, and other sponsorship options are available wherein businesses increase their traction via heavy digital marketing and advertising to regional fan bases. Radio advertising is used for match & score updates and #omgmoments via commentary from renowned radio jockeys. This kind of sponsorship further includes PR, social media, news ads, etc., for brands. Brands can use digital marketing to earn the best return on investment during the IPL season. All collaborations that seek to thrive, however, must always be a two-way highway. If and when done correctly, digital marketing has the ability to influence the destiny of any company, and they must take utmost advantage of the tools available!

With a rapidly growing viewership, it is no surprise to see an increasing number of brands opting to advertise on OTT platforms. They have changed the way the world consumes content. In India alone, there was a consumption of 204 billion minutes of OTT content in 2021. And this new way of providing media content brings new challenges and opportunities.  Within this new TV revolution, let’s see how brands can stay ahead of the game and constantly deliver unique experiences to engage consumers: 

OTT Advertising- the Digital Revolution

Before we get into the details, it is important to understand what is OTT advertising and how is it helping marketers. The rising popularity of OTT media globally has opened up opportunities for brands to reach out to their audiences in much more creative ways. By adding precision targeting, geographical and demographic selection to the advertiser’s arsenal, OTTs have enabled advertisers to create unique promotional content that is personalised and delivered to viewers' televisions while they are watching the same broadcast. With targeted ad delivery systems, user profiling, and AI-enabled technologies, marketers also have more control over quality and where the brand is being positioned. 

Adding OTT to Marketing Mix

The entertainment landscape is rapidly moving beyond cable networks as the audiences are increasing their sway towards video on demand platforms. The OTT ecosystem has been becoming increasingly attractive from an advertising and marketing standpoint over the last few years, with the marketing community placing large bets on how they spend and connect with these platforms, pushing beyond the traditional ads. Taking advantage of the changing landscape and opportunities for growth, media companies and OTT advertising agencies, continue to innovate to guarantee that brands get the highest return on their investment. When it comes to the different types of streaming services available to viewers, there are two different types of video on demand supported platforms:

• Subscription Video-on-Demand (SVOD)

The service is subscription-based and allows for OTT content, although it is not ad-supported. Users pay a monthly fee in exchange for the ability to watch commercial-free programming. Netflix, Disney+Hotstar, and Amazon Prime Video are examples of SVOD services.

• Ad-Supported Video-on Demand (AVOD)

People can watch content for free via streaming applications and/or websites, but they will see adverts inside the programmes they are watching. Home-grown OTT AVOD players like SonyLiv, Zee5, AltBalaji and Voot have shown a rise in viewership, increasing the appeal of advertising on the platforms.

Growing your Brand with OTT Advertising

OTT ads have the ability to reach a much larger number of people who share common interests. While traditional advertising methods are still effective, these platforms allow marketers to precisely target their intended audience with data-driven, personalised advertisements that are expected to provide 5 to 8 times more return on investment in comparison to generic advertisements. With precision targeting, OTT marketing strategies can also help brands stretch their marketing budget even farther and cut down on wastage. They increase the chances of your adverts being seen solely by those who are likely to be interested.

OTT Advertising in Action

With effective product placement and brand integration, OTT platforms enable businesses to showcase their products and services and complete the purchase cycle. One of the finest example of Tata Tea Gold’s tie up with Prime Video’s Shakuntala Devi. The aim was to drive brand recall and advocate the brand proposition #DilKiSuno through the story. Similarly, Center Fresh collaborated with Prime Video’s Bandish Bandits to create video commercials with the show’s lead casts. Adding to the list of examples, Nykaa, India’s first women-led unicorn, partnered with Netflix’s women-centred stories for their ‘Beauty in her Story’ campaign. The world is rapidly moving towards digital transformation and it is time for your organisation to also move along. To conclude, you have unceasing opportunities knocking at your door if you choose to leverage OTT Media for Digital Advertising. If you are somehow apprehensive or confused about how to take things forward, let #ARM assist you towards an entertaining and engaging future ahead!

Initially started as a means to enhance the gaming experience and entertainment, metaverse has evolved to become the most significant tech that is revolutionising all prominent sectors across the globe. This visually rendered internet allows individuals and brands to interact across digital worlds and exchange digital items across platforms. Let us find out what the buzz is all about.  

Why Big Brands are Entering Metaverse?

The CEO of Futures Intelligence Group and chief metaverse officer- Cathay Hackl states that “Every brand and company will need a metaverse strategy.” The reason for the same is that Metaverse has taken marketing to a whole new different level. The enhanced and immersive marketing that has been made possible through metaverse could not be accomplished so far with web 2.0.  It has made trading more advanced both for the consumers as well as the buyers. While sellers can demonstrate their entire portfolio in the digital space,  buyers are in a position to make more informed decisions along with saving time and resources that would have been spent on travelling to the physical stores. It has revamped the entire inventory management process and enabled brands to combat the problem of limited physical space in the showroom and warehouses. 

How are brands leveraging Metaverse to their Advantage?

Metaverse is expected to become a whopping $800 billion market by 2024. It offers infinite possibilities to brands for marketing their products in ways that haven’t been used before. Since it is a virtual platform, the complexities associated with the concept of time and space do not act as a hurdle in marketing. Brands can leverage the opportunity to build connections with audiences that seemed out of scope until now due to geographical and other differences. With metaverse, a person in Europe will be able to assess and buy an article from a store in Russia without moving from their place. Fashion brands have the opportunity to enter a whole new market of digital-first clothing. Some top brands have already launched their fashion avatars in the metaverse. A classic example of this is the Pokemon Go avatars that were launched by Gucci and The North Face in January 2021. 

Top Metaverse Projects

Sandbox is the most renowned block-chain based metaverse. It offers numerous creative opportunities for game enthusiasts by enabling them to design games, own them and monetize them in the Ethereum blockchain. To provide seamless user-generated content production, the sandbox has three integrated products namely Voxedit, Market place, and Game Maker. Whatever you create can be secured through copyright ownership through blockchains and smart contracts.  Horizon World is an expansive multi-layer platform, combining Roblox and the OASIS VR world from Ready Player User is only required to have an active Facebook account to enter Horizon World. You can socialise with up to 20 people at a time. It promotes creativity by allowing users to write basic codes on how a particular object work in the metaverse. In Meta, these codes are called script blocks  Decentraland is one of the earliest metaverses that is powered by Ethereum. It uses two tokens LAND and MANA. MANA  is the native ERC-20token that is used for purchasing virtual plots of land and other in-world goods and services. On the other hand, LAND is a virtual real estate NFT. You have to burn Mana in order to buy LAND

Technologies that power Metaverse

Metaverse is combining various advanced technologies to provide the users with a truly immersive experience. Of all the technologies, AI plays the most important role.  It provides activity insights pertaining to the upper layers and enhances the robustness of the metaverse infrastructure. It will make metaverse accessible to every one advanced tech such as automatic translation, image recognition, intelligent exoskeleton, and brain-computer interfaces.  The next crucial technologies are AR and VR are which enable the users to get into the metaverse. AR superimposes digital objects and VR produces computer-generated virtual space. With the help of VR headsets, gloves and sensors, users can enter the virtual environment sensors and gloves.  The Internet of Things is another popular technology powering the metaverse. It collects, stores and shares information over a wireless network without any human intervention. Devices that has IoT technology feature sensors and mini-computer processors that collect data and act upon it through machine learning.  act upon the data collected by the sensors with the help of machine learning.

Metaverse: What to expect in the future?

The possibilities in Metaverse are infinite. It entirely depends upon the level of creativity, availability of resources, and the degree of risk an individual or organisation is willing to take. In the near future, corporate meetings will shift from digital platforms to a virtual universe where instead of just seeing and hearing each other, people across the globe will be able to meet each other without travelling physically.  VR headsets will become an integral part of corporate routine functions. Even social events such as events, concerts, comedy shows, social evenings, exhibitions will be held in the metaverse. Most importantly, the metaverse is expected to become one of the biggest contributors to the growth of the virtual economy.  Hence, it is safe to say that metaverse in the next big thing in tech that is all set to revolutionise all the major industries across the globe. The revolution has picked up the pace already due to the Covid-19 pandemic that restricted the public movement. Industries that are already using metaverse include e-commerce, education, corporate etc.

“Where there is a woman, there is magic” - Ntozake Shange. The achievements of women and how far they have come in the struggle for their rights within the cultural, political, and social spheres are honoured as International Women’s Day on 8th March every year. Furthermore, organisations big and small come together to show women just how valuable they are in today’s society.  Read on to learn how #ARM is celebrating International Women’s Day 2022 and how we support the ‘Women of Today, Tomorrow, and Every day’: 

Values Instilled at Core

To make gender equality a reality, from the boardroom and C-suite to front-line employees — we need to shift our thinking around values. Values and beliefs drive culture within an organisation. The past years have been a growth story for our organisation. We are proud of our story as we enter the 10th year to state that this journey began and continues with females just alongside males in all processes and activities.  In a bid to promote women’s empowerment at the workplace, #ARM Worldwide is overjoyed to have a workforce ratio of 50-50. Furthermore, 50% of our senior-level management are powerful women.

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion

Holding and creating a safe space within the organisations takes time, willingness, and energy. We need to believe that it is part of our work and not a separate time-consuming activity. Having a combination of leadership buy-in and trail-leaders at our organisation is the magic ingredient that makes up for a beautiful recipe. However, it takes time. Diversified hiring programs, women support groups under the larger scope, flexibility, and many other similar initiatives have truly helped move our diversity ratio upward. 

360-degree Commitment

A conversation about healthy boundaries is never too early. Even with young children, these are the building blocks of how little boys consider personal space and boundaries as they grow older. By nurturing an environment of trust and freedom (with responsibility, of course), ARM spreads positivity throughout the workforce. People are observed to be much more productive and committed to the team’s boundaries within a safe work culture by conducting workshops and brainstorming sessions that set expectations for performance.

Personality & Career Development Initiatives

Upskilling programs and opportunities for women to assimilate back into the workforce faster have proved to be a great talent pool enhancer. In addition, peer coaching, networking workshops, leadership talk sessions, self-paced learning modules, and opportunities for visibility are some initiatives that have been rewarding for our teams. We host a week-long women’s day celebration every year by inviting powerful female leaders to share their stories and experiences to inspire and educate our workforce. This year, we are honoured to have Sonali Dutta and Ashruti Baranwal as keynote speakers on 8th March. 

Here’s to all the ladies!

Prioritising the inclusion of women in the workplace brings society closer to normalising the experiences of all women. Furthermore, creating a culture of psychological safety and inclusion is a critical component to attract and retain the best female talent, which is definitely worth celebrating. So let’s raise a toast to the strong women — may we know them, may we raise them, may we be them!

With more and more brands targeting the consumers online, digital continues to be deeply implanted in the communications strategy of brands. As a result, businesses today must not only plan for the future of their marketing efforts but also be prepared to take advantage of them. So it’s that time again when we all collectively look at the digital trends and opportunities for 2022.  Let’s revisit some of the must-have trends in your arsenal for this year: 

Social Media Trends

According to Sprout Social, 71% of people are using social media now more than ever before. As a result, brands that meet or exceed their audience’s expectations on social media will be rewarded with massive spikes in engagement. 

• Into the Metaverse with Augmented Reality
• Power of Hyper-Personalisation
• Whatever you say, say only in Video
• If it’s Organic, it has to be Local
• Valued Niche Social Experience

Read the exhaustive BLOG here. 

Paid Media Trends

With paid media offering instant traffic and results compared to other forms of digital and traditional marketing, digital advertising is essential for every business. Whether you’re selling a product or offering services, paid media can benefit every business if used correctly.

• Move Towards Effectiveness in Planning Models
• Coming Soon ‘Cookieless’ Existence
• The Rise of AI and ML
• Gaming Platforms will Reign Display & Discovery
• Digital Eyes Everywhere

Read the exhaustive BLOG here. 

PR Trends

As a business, your role is to steer your customers in the right direction — both with your PR strategy and your holistic approach to marketing recommendations. To do that, you need to keep your finger on the pulse of PR and learn what’s out-of-date, what’s upcoming, and what’s hot right now. 

• Personal Branding: #1 PR Strategy
• Quantifying Metrics for PR Performance 
• Exclusive Media Pitching
• Representing DE&I
• Culturally-Relevant PR Content

Read the exhaustive BLOG here. 

UI/UX Trends

As the world moves markets online, UI/UX design has become more important than ever. In addition, as new technologies arise, there is potential for UI/UX to become much more innovative in 2022 than in the last couple of years.

• Hello ScrollyTelling
• Contactless Search: Voice User Interface
• Configuring Mega-Footers
• Brutalism vs Minimalism
• Inclusive Design For All
• SPECIAL: Into The Metaverse

Read the exhaustive BLOG here. 

Influencer Marketing Trends

Beyond their role as effective brand ambassadors, influencers are also great marketers. And business marketers can stand to learn a few things from them. So stay on top of these top influencer trends to ensure you’re getting the most out of your partnerships.

• Rise of Social Commerce
• Power of Micro-Influencers
• Inclusivity Matters
• Think System, Not Silos
• Always-on Marketing Strategy

Read the exhaustive BLOG here.

Marketing Automation Trends

2022 will be all about creating engaging, unique experiences that add value to the evolved, to make user engagement feel super-connected, always-online consumer, and Marketing Automation will act as a catalyst in making it all happen.

• Customer Retention will be Critical
• A Mobile-first Approach
• Optimise Content for Funnelling
• Embracing Conversational Marketing
• Emergence of AI & ML

Read the exhaustive BLOG here, 

SEO Trends

Optimising your site will improve the CX and help deliver better leads to search engines so your content can be properly indexed and exhibited within search results. SEO is about visibility and enhancing your chances of being found on the internet, and it makes sense to incorporate it into your all-around digital marketing strategy.

• User Intent Goes Deeper
• Semantic SEO Increasing Relevance
• The Popularity of Voice Search
• Growing Importance of E-A-T
• AI for Greater Impact

Read the exhaustive BLOG here. 

E-commerce Trends

All this buzz around E-commerce has inspired well-known retailers to up their digital game. It’s a thrilling time to be involved in online retail sales, but successfully competing in 2022 will require you to adapt and integrate some of these E-commerce trends.

• Rise of “M-commerce”
• Buyer Journey Optimisation
• Headless PWA E-commerce
• Demand for Voice & Live Shopping
• B2B E-commerce is Next Up

Read the exhaustive BLOG here. 

Social Commerce Trends

Social commerce has transformed into a powerful sales channel. Boosting your social commerce capabilities will offer your brand a myriad of business benefits. From driving traffic to increasing sales to increasing customer engagement and website traffic.

• Future of Commerce: Conversation
• Leveraging UGC x Micro-influencers 
• Livestream Shopping will Dominate 
• Specialist Social Marketplaces
• Designing Frictionless Experiences

Read the exhaustive BLOG here.

Tech Trends

As technology branches out into new areas, the companies that have embraced new tech will have an online advantage. Advanced tech capabilities indicate new markets and also introduce new methods that could give you a potential lead over your online competition.

• Prioritising Decision Intelligence
• Hyperscaling your Cloud Journey
• Adopting a Total Experience (TX) Strategy
• When AI meets IoT
• Need for Cyber Resilience

Read the exhaustive BLOG here.

Here’s to 2022!

It’s not just about creating a big splash or sharing attention-grabbing content anymore; it’s about the overall upliftment of consumers and the business together. In a world that is still flustered with the ongoing pandemic chaos, it’s time to batten down the hatches and learn about the trends for 2022 to get ahead of the game. Take a look at the trends above and read more into them to get a complete perspective of how you could make things better for your business!

From the continuing advancement and leveraging of artificial intelligence to developments that make even online shopping a ‘hands-on’ experience, technology is composed to continue transforming the way we live and work in 2022. The confluence of technologies is completely altering how we live and transact and will ultimately drive decisions on how we make money. Looking forward to the new year, management teams should recalibrate based on the following technology trends for 2022:

Prioritising Decision Intelligence

Decision intelligence integrates a variety of decision-making techniques with artificial intelligence (AI), business intelligence (BI), automation, machine learning (ML), and forward-thinking decision-makers to drive a meaningful impact on your organisation. Study shows by 2023, more than 33% of large organisations will be practising decision intelligence and modelling. In addition, by 2025, data stories will become the most widespread source of valuable insights. 

Businesses can use decision intelligence to understand and focus on high-impact sales activities, identify sales opportunities most likely to close, and even help reps to update their sales forecasts in real-time. Like all tech-focused initiatives, understanding decision frameworks and deploying AI models is crucial. As a result, businesses will achieve a higher return on data and advanced technology investments, with the prospect of gathering actionable intelligence that powers more progressive decisions. 

Hyperscaling your Cloud Journey

At a business level, enabling the cloud is critical. The majority of organisations’ apps need to be hosted in some sort of cloud, and hence for many, this means working with a hyperscaler. For example, AWS, Microsoft Azure, Alibaba Cloud, and Google Cloud had combined revenues of $86 billion in 2020. In 2021, the combined revenue of the four hyperscalers mentioned was expected to surpass $121 billion.

To aid fluctuating and high demand, data centres are built on thousands of physical servers and millions of virtual machines. The result is easily accessible, cost-effective, reliable, and scalable resources. For businesses, hyperscalers’ architecture offers next-level performance without the complexity of managing a corporate data centre. Thus, using hyperscalers offers a level of reassurance for the future.

Adopting a Total Experience (TX) Strategy

TX will seek to identify intersections of customer experience (CX), employee experience (EX), and user experience (UX), helping organisations to deploy the most impactful solutions. A study shows that 36% of consumers tried a new brand during the pandemic, and 73% said they intended to stick with those new brands. A TX focused company can leverage this switching to their benefit by creating a winning experience across every touchpoint.

A TX strategy will improve the overall experience, breaking down silos while integrating technology and differentiating businesses in a way that is difficult to match, creating a sustainable competitive advantage. In addition, by making meaningful investments in integrated smart technology to allow cross-disciplinary engagement, teams work like a well-oiled machine while snagging higher affinity and satisfaction from customers, employees, and users.

When AI meets IoT

The consolidation of AI & IoT will redefine the way industries, businesses, and economies function. AIoT creates machines that simulate smart behaviour and support decision making with little to no human interference. Moreover, intelligent AIoT offers insights into which redundant or time-consuming processes can be fine-tuned to magnify the efficiency. E.g. Google’s reduction in expenditure to cool their data centres.

By applying AI & IoT trends, Deloitte found out that there are 20-50% reductions in their time invested in maintenance planning, 10-20% increase in equipment availability and uptime, and 5-10% reduction in maintenance costs. The AI-powered IoT ecosystem will analyse and summarise data before transferring it to other devices. It reduces large volumes of data and allows connecting a large number of IoT devices. Thus, it increases scalability.

Need for Cyber Resilience

Evasion techniques such as dodging detection and working around security protocols have become top approaches, with hackers investing time and upskilling to understand security tooling better than most businesses do. Reportedly, a 300% rise in cybercrime was reported following the COVID-19 outbreak. Additionally, as more employees have moved their work from the office, hackers are taking advantage of this opportunity by threatening highly vulnerable business networks.

Cyber resilience aims to bolster your ability to always deliver. This includes restoring regular mechanisms or modifying mechanisms continuously even after a crisis or after a security breach. Cyber resilience is needed to identify, assess, manage, mitigate and recover from malicious attacks. A comprehensive resiliency program will help businesses maintain business operations during uncertain times. 

Looking Ahead

Although technologies are unwinding and evolving all around us, these top technology trends offer promising potential today and for the foreseeable future. With digital changeover becoming an increasingly important part of success for organisations looking to compete in the global marketplace, staying on top of these latest technology trends of 2022 for business is no longer optional. Let’s hope that the resulting innovation makes the world better for people and businesses alike!

Indian users today make up a substantial share of users on international social commerce platforms and are a key target market for such platforms to extend. And social commerce presents a cost-effective alternative for businesses reeling under the pressure of scaling customer acquisition costs and stumbling to protect these treasured customers from competitors pursuing them endlessly with deep discounts. For retailers interested in building out cohesive social shopping experiences, we have listed 5 hands-on social commerce trends to consider:

Future of Commerce: Conversation

It’s well-known that customer experience plays a major role in determining the progress and growth of any company. This is where embracing conversational commerce will change the way your business performs in the time to come. According to a social commerce survey, conversational commerce (49%) is gaining popularity in India, as 9 out of 10 people relished the shopping experience of interacting with chatbots.

Through text, chat or live video, users can interact with stores in real-time, asking questions, viewing products, and getting recommendations that encourage them to follow through with purchase transactions. As a result, it will help boost physical sales and increase foot traffic in stores. Thus, conversational technology delivers a huge opportunity for brands and retailers to sweeten the customer experience and maximise sales across various channels. 

Leveraging UGC x Micro-influencers 

User-generated content continues to be more trusted than many other forms of media, and in certain cases, much more popular. Now leverage UGC via micro-influencers to deliver your brand message even better! Study shows that at least 30% of consumers make a purchase simply because their favourite influencer promoted it. Also, 8 out of 10 consumers believe that UGC strongly influences their purchasing decision.

By involving micro-influencers in a UGC hashtag or giveaway contests, you can amplify brand visibility and reach through their dedicated follower’s network, thus scaling up UGC. To make the most of UGC, find a platform helping brands discover influencers and unique content from all corners of the internet, including TikTok, YouTube and Instagram, to engage the audience and drive sales. 

Livestream Shopping will Dominate 

Blending entertainment with instant purchasing, Livestream shopping offers retailers, brands, and digital platforms a new channel with enormous scope for creating value. It enables discovery, browsing and purchasing on one platform without the need to interact with any external websites or apps. Thus, creating seamless UX with fewer clicks, higher potential revenue, and conversion rates.

Globally, 85% of respondents who watched shopping livestreams report that they are more likely to purchase via social media. Moreover, online shoppers in India are envisioned to reach 220 million by 2025. Live commerce increases a brand’s charm and uniqueness and draws additional web traffic. In addition, it strengthens customer positioning, especially young ones keen on innovative shopping formats and experiences.

Specialist Social Marketplaces

With social exchange at the forefront of everyday interactions, it only makes sense for businesses to push marketing out through these social channels to reach the most valuable viewers possible. More than half (59%) of social buyers surveyed said they are more likely to support small and medium-sized businesses through social commerce than shopping through E-commerce websites.

New-age digital-first brands are cropping up across categories prompting them to use non-traditional channels such as Facebook and Instagram for marketing. YouTube is now also on the verge of becoming the next hub for promoting online markets. Similar to influencers and vloggers, brands are coming forward and promoting their businesses on YouTube.

Designing Frictionless Experiences

Brands that offer frictionless and seamless experiences across all platforms are bound to see the increased acquisition and retention rates. 46% of consumers said they would pay more for a friendly and welcoming experience, whereas 55% said they would pay more for fast and efficient services. 

More efficient devices would enable XR use cases where there is a 5G-Advanced connection, granting users the true perception of living remote and allowing them to efficiently interact in such surroundings, no matter where they are physically located. In addition, brands must aim to streamline the entire process and ease the journey to complete purchases on social commerce platforms to offer the digital convenience that users are looking for. 

Way Forward

As is evident above, from the rise of multiple platforms and advancing user needs, social commerce is here to stay. However, when it comes to planning out a social commerce strategy, it is important to look for a solution that will be cohesive and simple to manage. #ARM Worldwide can help you optimise the customer experience and tap into social shopping. We hope you decide to keep a watch on these social commerce trends and jump on the social commerce bandwagon soon!